Long Week

It has been an incredibly long week.  Come to think of it, the thing might not even be over yet, as there is some chance I'll end up playing tomorrow, but boy could I use a day off.  The stats on the monster so far are:

Colds Defeated:  1
Butt in Seat Hours Played:  52
Bets Won:  133
Dollars Won:  ~$15k
Bad Commute Percentage:  75

You see, I kind of got into a rhythm of getting to Commerce as early as possible and making sure I got a seat in the 60 game.  The thing tends to fill up pretty quickly if it has run over night (which was happening regularly) and it's possible to spend literally several hours first up on the list if you show up at the wrong time.  So by Friday I was walking in the door BEFORE 9am, which is just ridiculous if you think about it for more than a few seconds.  Nine in the morning?  To walk into the casino?  That's just absurd.  Under ideal conditions (ie, after 8pm on weekdays), the drive is 35 minutes.  More realistically it's 45, and some days this week I barely sneaked in under an hour.  But it worked out.  Yesterday alone I logged 11 hours of 60/120 play (and that's accounting for breaks).  Today I took it kind of easy, playing for just 6 hours.

I learned some stuff, too, which is always fun.  I have a new rule, one that is kind of an old rule to most pros but that I would have done well to listen to the last few weeks.  It's often best to sit in the second biggest game in the room.  The corollary for Commerce is that if they are starting a 1/2 game, and you don't see a (very) compelling reason to go sit in it, you're probably better off staying in the 60.  I got tricked once this week, and ended up hating my situation and dropping back down to 40 wishing I'd never left the 60 to sit in a mediocre 1/2 game.  The next day...I didn't fall for it.  They fired up the game and two pros jumped from the 60 and the fish...didn't follow them.  Bang, amazing 60 game for the next 5 hours.   So far my results in that game have just been stupefying, to the point that I'm having trouble explaining them even to myself.  Obviously most of it is flat out running good, but I feel like there could be some other things going on as well.  It's a time game, and therefore seems to get out a lot more hands.  It's a 2/3 blind structure, which I'm pretty sure is fantastic for me.  I've started taking part in collection pots, which I think is saving me like $5/hour or something.  And most importantly, I suppose I've been game selecting for when it's good, and just playing the 40 when it's not.  I thought about this concept recently when I was working on the Run Good Ratio post, and it's kind of an oddity.  Most players have a game they ALWAYS play, meaning if a seat opens at that level they auto-sit.  For me that used to be 20.  Now it's 40.  At that level, you're not game selecting in the slightest.  You've come to the Casino for the day and you're going to play.  Sure, at a place like Commerce you do have some freedom to move around, but in the mornings for me that's often not the case.  It could be 5 or 6 hours after I arrive before there are even two main games.  But if you're selectively playing a bigger game (like the 60, or 1/2 or even white chips) you could actually, on average, be in better games, bet for bet, than when you sit in your "always play" stakes.  There are some other things to consider;  Is game quality correlated across stakes?  Could it actually be negatively correlated, meaning that a bad 60 game means the 40 games tend to be better?  And what about what's becoming my favorite trick, sitting in a mediocre 60 waiting for the correct moment to list myself for 40, right after 2 or 3 juicy names go on the board.  How does that affect things?  Should I really be considering playing 20/40 from time to time if the 40s stink, or should I just go home?  All of this stuff is very interesting, and it makes playing a day at Commerce much more stressful than a day at, say, The Bike or HG.  There you just show up and play.  At Commerce your head literally needs to be on a swivel, and there are times that you're listed for literally three games you're not currently playing and end up with multiple seats at once.  Just today, for example, it was my turn to must move out of the 40 game just as the 60 was firing up.  I tried to explain to the floor man that he should let me play my free lap in the game I was in, but he looked at me like I had two heads.  Of course I was in the small blind when he told me, so I played my button and sadly picked up a hand, which caused me to miss my cutoff for entry (the high jack) into the must move game.  So I told the dealer that I'd wait, then locked up seat 6 in the 60, drew for the button, pulled UTG, folded my free hand, took an out button, then walked back to the 40 and patiently played my free lap.  I mean...that's a fair bit of effort and angling just to make sure you don't get screwed out of a free lap (notice I didn't even get any advantage...I played my button exactly in the must move game and just took the CO through UTG in the main).

Things so far this year have just been fantastic;  quitting the bike job and subsequently getting barred was literally the best combination of things that could have ever happened.  Yesterday pushed me over 800 bets won for the year, and I haven't exactly been playing small.  If I hadn't torched off $30K over 3 successive 2/4 and 1/2 sessions...well, we won't talk about that.  As it stands right now I've already made more money that I would have deemed a successful year on January 1st, and I've done it without taking in THAT much prop or promotion pay.  It's kind of weird, but also amazingly satisfying, when periods of hard work actually line up with periods of financial success.  It feels fantastic.

Wow...that isn't where I was intending to go with this post at all.  But I guess it was kind of good.  Before I wrap up, I went on a bit of a rant here, and spilled some perhaps useful wisdom about scheduling your life as a poker player.  If 2p2 is blocked for you...meh too bad I'm not copying and pasting the whole thing you shouldn't let the man tell you what to do.